django {% url %} with parameters (list of dicts)

Question

I'm following the suggestion at: Refresh <div> element generated by a django template

I'm passing along a few variables, a la:

url: '{% url 'search_results' 'sched_dep_local' flights|escapejs %}',

The problem is that 'flights' is a list of dicts that the search_results template needs access to, and it's pretty large and contains things like apostrophes

[{'foo': 'bar'}, {'foo': 'baz'}] and so on

So the only way I can use it with {% url %} appears to be with escapejs to get rid of the apostrophes, but then in views.py, I need it to be a list of dicts again, so I can do things like:

def search_results(request, sort_key, flights):
    flights = search_utils.sort(flights, sort_key)
    return render_to_response('search_results.html', { 'flights' : flights} )                                                                                                                                    

Is there a simple way to do this? Alternatively, am I going about this whole thing all wrong?

ETA: See also (explains what I'm trying to do and why):

<script>
$(".sort").on("click", function() {
    $.ajax({
        url: '{% url 'search_results' 'sched_dep_local' flights|escapejs %}',
        success: function(data) {
            $('#search-results').html(data);
        }
    });
});
</script>

I have a template (in search_results.html) that prints some data for each flight in flights. I want to sort that data and rerender the template, but I can't figure out how.

Answer 1

This isn't the right way to deal with complex data. Rather than sending it via the URL, you should be using a POST and sending it in the body of the request: since you're using jQuery, you can just do method: "POST" in that call. In the backend, you can deserialize it from JSON.

However, it does seem a bit strange to do this at all; the data is evidently coming from the Django backend already, so it's not clear why you want to post it back there.